


Identity Theft

by Lucy Gillam (cereta)



Series: Hanging Work [15]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-01
Updated: 2011-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:00:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereta/pseuds/Lucy%20Gillam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two tickets to a circus never used, a little boy forgotten, and a chance meeting. Of such things are legends made.  Part XV of the Hanging Work Series.</p><p>Gotham needs a Bat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Identity Theft

Two weeks, when Dick really stopped to think about it, wasn't that long.

Less than half a month (unless that month was February, which this wasn't), only one twenty-fifth of a year (or one twenty-sixth, math had never been his strong suit), fourteen cycles of waking and sleeping (unless you were in No Man's Land, in which case it was more like ten).

It wasn't long at all -- unless you were stuck in a city ravaged by an earthquake, kept here by some stupid, idealistic notion of helping those unable to help themselves and by some _fucked-up_ attachment to a man whose real name you didn't even know and who had been _gone_ for _two fucking weeks_.

The possibility that he might not be able to come back, that he might be gone in another way, was one Dick tried very hard not to think about.

He swung his fist, and the sound of it impacting with the man's nose was very satisfying. Dick didn't even try not to enjoy the scream that followed. Served the bastard right, taking food from an old woman.

"Leave now," he told the man, trying to remember that nearly everyone here was desperate, trying to remember that enough people were dead already.

Clutching his bleeding nose, the man obeyed, and Dick bent down to retrieve the can of peaches. The old woman, who looked as if she had almost certainly been in dire straits before the quake, was still crouched in the corner of the fallen building and hiding her head from the man who had robbed her. And probably, Dick reflected wryly, from him, as well. A figure in what was obviously a costume, eyes hidden by goggles that might as well have been a mask, had to be even less comforting in Gotham now than it usually was -- especially a figure without the tell-tale yellow insignia on the chest.

An insignia that hadn't been seen in Gotham for just over two weeks.

"Here," he said, holding the can out to her while still keeping a two feet between them. No point in spooking her, or, for that matter, risking getting too close himself. He still had the bruise on his shin from the kid he'd helped out of a street crater last week. After several seconds, she finally peered out from between her arms. After several more seconds, she cautiously reached out, then snatched the can from him.

"You should think about going to Tricorners," Dick said to her. "I hear the police have set up a presence there. It's got to be safer than here." She mumbled something inaudible. "Sorry, what?"

"This is my home," she said only marginally louder.

Dick sighed. He'd heard that a lot in the last month, and it never got any easier to answer. "Yeah, well, home is where they don't mug you for peaches, you know?" He supposed it was unfair of him to be quite so annoyed with the people who just wouldn't _leave_ places where they obviously weren't safe, but it still got old. Still made him wonder what the hell he was doing here.

And it was just enough to distract him so that he didn't see the three men until they were almost on top of him. He had just enough time to register the bloody nose on one of them before a fist impacted with his stomach.

"Yeah," Bloody Nose said, "who's leaving now?"

"Look," Dick wheezed, "if you're going to beat me up, could you at least come up with better material? 'Who's leaving now?' That doesn't even make…" He dodged the pipe before it could connect with his skull, but it was a near thing, and the men had already formed a triangle around him. Of all the challenges of No Man's Land, the lack of vertical escapes had to be the worst.

 _Oh, this is not going to happen,_ he thought. _I am not going to survive falling buildings and fires and getting shot at by a puppet and_ living with Batman _to die over a can of peaches_.

The pipe was in the air again, and Dick braced to move in whatever direction would best avoid it when the man holding it stiffened and fell, revealing a tall brunette in black and purple, a gold cross gleaming at her throat, standing right behind him. Not one to look a gift vigilante in the mouth, Dick took the opportunity to kick the thug to his immediate right in the jaw. The crack probably meant a dislocation, but he was beyond caring.

Bloody Nose, the only one of the three still standing, stared for a moment, then turned and ran again.

Dick took a deep breath, pushing the hair that had needed cutting for over a month off his face. "So," he said. "Huntress, right?"

"You remember. I'm touched." She was already checking the man she had clobbered, tossing the pipe out of reach.

"Well, yeah. Saw the name in the papers. I thought Batman shut you down."

The blazing stare told him that had been a mistake. "He tried."

Dick just nodded. Pointing out that he had not heard mention of her in nearly a year would probably not win him any points right now.

"Besides, how would you know?"

Dick shrugged. "Believe it or not, I have a reason to keep informed as to who's fighting crime in Gotham. Or I did, anyway."

Huntress stood. "That reminds me," she said, and suddenly her hand was holding a small crossbow, "whatever you're thinking of stealing, you can forget it."

"Steal--" Dick laughed. "You're kidding, right? Lady, _anything_ in this town worth taking out of it is long gone." Dick chose not to mention the small stash of jewelry he'd managed to hide even from Batman. It was highly unlikely that the original owners were going to come back and claim it, and anyway, he'd need _something_ to get him re-established once he got out of here.

"So why are you still here?"

That really was the question, wasn't it? "I don't suppose if I said it was a long story you'd just put that thing down and let me walk away, would you?"

Huntress regarded him for a moment. Dick wondered if she knew how much that glare of hers was damned near the trademark Bat-glare, and decided that was another thing he shouldn't say. Slowly, she lowered her crossbow. "This is probably a mistake," she said, "but maybe we should talk."

 _"Oh, kid. Do we have things to talk about."_

This is not Selina, he told himself.

He hadn't trusted her at first, either.

This was not Batman, either.

Yeah, and where was he?

This was how he always got into trouble.

Was there anything _else_ he particularly had to do at this moment? Besides maybe get out of this godforsaken city?

Dick nodded. "Here's not good. Do you have someplace we can go?" She hesitated again, and he rolled his eyes. "Or we can go to my place. Seriously, is there a chapter on paranoia in the Gotham Crimefighters Handbook, or something?"

They moved in silence through the ruins of the city, both of them seeming to know the places where they had to cut down other streets or through crumbled buildings, places where the various criminals and crazies and gangs were already tagging walls to mark the territory.

He wasn't taking her to the warehouse; he hadn't been back there since Batman left. It wasn't intentional, not really, although he wasn't sure which he feared more: that he wouldn't find Batman there, or that he would. But he'd needed some place to grab a few hours of sleep in between attempts to get out of the city, and his old apartment was gone.  
It wasn't until they were almost to the building Dick crashed in most nights (he would not call it a lair; he _refused_ to call it a lair) that he realized with a jolt that he was leading Huntress down one of the same streets Selina had led him down thirteen years before. When Huntress stopped in front of the building he was leading her into, almost exactly as he had stopped in front of the restaurant that day, he almost laughed out loud.

"Park Plaza?"

"It's in better shape than it looks," Dick replied with a shrug. "And anything worth stealing was gone by the first week after the quake, so almost no one ever comes here."

The interior looked as bad as it had right after the quake, worse in some places, but the basic structure of the mall level had held in the stores that weren't under the condos. Dick had chosen the cell phone store as his "home" on the theory that what few items were left in there weren't of much use to the good citizens of Gotham these days. He was mostly sleeping in the back, and he'd scrounged another sleeping bag to replace the one he'd stubbornly left at the warehouse and a few other supplies. The store area itself would do for now, though. He perched himself on the counter and gestured around the store. "Pull up a … whatever."

Huntress leaned against one of the few display pillars that were still standing. "So, look," she started, then stopped short. "What should I call you?"

Dick sighed. Here it was again. He took off his goggles. In the grand scheme of things, he supposed it didn't really matter right now if a half-crazed vigilante knew his face, or his name, for that matter. Who was she going to report it to? "Dick," he said, waiting for the inevitable.

She raised an eyebrow. "Is that a name or a descrip--"

"It's my name," he snapped.

"You don't have another moniker like your mentor? I mean, I suppose "Catboy" wouldn't be very flattering, and "Catman" is taken, but nothing?"

"I don't need a name to use when I'm stealing from people. What _is_ it with this town and elaborate personas?"

Huntress suppressed her answering smile badly, and then said, "Dick, then. You're taking a chance, bringing me here."

Dick shrugged again. "Not really. I can always find somewhere else to crash, and really, unless what you've got to say is extremely interesting, I'm leaving the city today anyway."

"Why are you still here?"

Dick sighed. "Yeah, that's the question, isn't it?"

It had all made sense right after the quake. When he'd explained it to Selina, it had all seemed so clear. "At first I stayed to help," was the best way he could put it.

He waited for her to challenge him, hoping she wouldn't. When she merely nodded, he continued, "I was planning to leave two weeks ago when B-- …when the person I was with left. I was headed toward the Trigate Bridge to see if I could figure something out there, and I…ran into some trouble. Spent two days getting some people to the clinic near crime alley, another three waiting for some stuff to heal enough for me to move, and then…" Dick frowned. "Then somehow I ended up spending a week helping the doctor's people scavenge medical supplies. Still not entirely sure how that happened."

Huntress almost smiled at that. "I met the doctor in question a few weeks ago. I'm not surprised."

"That's what I was doing when the evacuation order came down. I figured I could always get around the military. Anyway, the next time I tried to leave, we had a bad thunderstorm, and then today, well, you saw. But like I said, I was planning to leave today. What about you?"

"Me?"

"What's keeping you here?"

She stood straight at that. "Gotham is my home. My neighborhood needs me. The city needs…" She stopped, biting her lower lip. Dick knew what she had stopped herself from saying.

"Yeah. It does. But he doesn't seem to be around, does he?"

Huntress frowned again. "You were working with him, weren't you? I heard rumors, a few days after the quake, that he had helpers. You were one of them."

"Yeah," he sighed. "Don't really know how that happened, either." Which wasn't entirely true, but she didn't need to know that.

Huntress was silent for a long moment, looking first at him, then around the room, then back at him, and Dick had the familiar feeling of being appraised. This seems to be his day for deja' vu.

"Gotham needs a bat."

Dick blinked. "What again?"

"Gotham needs a bat," she repeated.

"Well, yeah, we established that. We also established that he's not around."

"It doesn't have to be him," she insisted. "It's the symbol they need right now. It has power. It's primal. It sends a message. Anyone could be wearing it." She looked at him pointedly.

"What are you… Oh, no," Dick protested. " _No_. No way. I'm _leaving_ , remember?" He'd already been here far longer than expected, longer than he'd told Selina. Batman had told him to leave, and that was it.

"Oh, sure you are," she said. "Unless you run into another little old lady who's had her peaches stolen, or the doctor drafts you again, or..."

"I get the point," he snapped. "Dammit, I've done my part."

"So you're just going to leave all these people to their fate? Think about who's left here, Dick. The rich, the powerful: they're gone. The people still here are mostly people who were already on the edge. Nobody else gives a damn about them."

Dick swallowed. She didn't know who he was, couldn't possibly know how he'd ended up in Gotham in the first place, couldn't know that he'd _been_ one of those people, that if the quake had happened thirteen years ago, he'd have been just like them.

There was no way she could know that.

"I am not putting a bat symbol on my chest," he said, hoping she was bright enough to catch that he hadn't said he wouldn't stay.

She was. "Why not? I mean, true, you're smaller than him, but do you really think people are going to notice?"

"What is it with the women I meet trying to change the way I dress? No. Why don't _you_ wear it?" Fucked-up attachment or not, there was no way he was putting on a batsuit. He wasn't just going to take over the role as if Batman were gone for good. It would be different if it were her, if it were so obviously someone who wasn't…Batman.

"Possibly you haven't noticed, but I'm a woman," Huntress said with obviously thinning patience.

"So? You said yourself that the symbol is what's important. Besides, how many people have ever _really_ seen him?" He looked at her critically. Costumes had always been Selina's area of expertise, but he hadn't forgotten everything he'd learned in the circus about showmanship. "We'd need to cover your whole face. You'd look more threatening that way, spookier."

"I still think you--"

"I don't have the attitude," Dick interrupted her. "You do. You're scarier than me."

Huntress smirked a bit at that, but didn't argue. She frowned again. "You know, if he does come back, he's not going to be happy about this. He doesn't…approve of me. Of anyone else doing this in his town."

That was true enough. If he did this, he was risking what respect he seemed to have earned from Batman after the quake, and the thought of Batman talking to him again like he had just after the plague made his stomach twist.

But Batman had left, and the city still needed help.

"Yeah, well," he said, "we'll deal with that if it happens."

"I suppose so."

They were both silent for a moment, then Dick took a deep breath. "So. How do we get started?"


End file.
